The End of FUN (46 page)

“All right!” said Manuel, the bassist. “Raise your hands if you have a good feeling inside you. Whoo! That's right! I'm feeling it this evening, too. This last one is by a band some of you old-timers may recognize. It's about faith and prayer and a man named Tommy who used to work on the docks….”

And as they launched into it, those first throbbing notes, I'm not going to say I wasn't moved a little.

“Yay!”

It's no “Amazing Grace,” but it's a pretty powerful song, and the JC Wonder Excursion knew how to rock it in a pretty satisfying way. And as they brought it home—all three of them singing the chorus in unison like a hard rock Christian barbershop quartet, with the guitar peeling away and Dad doing mad circles around his kit—I found myself thinking first about Katie, and then about Dad, and all the shit he'd been through, and how he looked kind of cool up there. The song came to an end—the final, triumphant cymbal crash hanging in the air like a musical sculpture of a woman's leg—and the crowd went wild.

Later, I ended up sitting with Dad on the back porch. He was still kind of glowing from the concert—or maybe just sweaty—with Bones passed out happy at his feet. I wanted to say something, but it's always at those times that I can't find the right words. Bones pawed the air in her sleep, chasing some ghostly squirrel.

Dad sighed. “It's pretty crazy, right?”

“What's crazy?”

“Life,” he said. “I sincerely thought I would have this shit figured by now.”

“You don't have it figured out?”

“Not even a little bit.” He paused. “Well, maybe a
little
bit….I'm giving up drinking.”

I almost added “again”—because he'd done it before, he was always giving up drinking or starting a band or ending a band or whatever—but I kept my mouth shut.

“So what's with the lockbox? What did you want to show me?”

“We need Evie here, too.”

“She's over by the fence with Isaac. I'll go grab her.”

“Wait,” I said. “So what's the little bit?”

“What?”

“The little bit you have figured out about life—what is it?”

Dad reached down to stroke Bones. “Oh, I don't know. Only that you never really figure it out. Or maybe that
figuring it out
is in some ways beside the point. Look, she's coming this way.”

So then it was the three of us.

“What's going on?” said Evie.

“I found something. At Grandpa's. Buried under the tree.”

“No kidding?” Dad's eyebrows raised. “What is it?”

“Well, don't get your hopes up.”

Even so, when I opened the box and they saw all that money, their eyes lit up, but right away Evie knew what the problem was.

“The deadline for Currency Exchange,” she said.

“Right.”

“What about it?” said Dad.

“It passed,” I said.

“What? Aren't there exceptions? Maybe some kind of exemption?”

“I don't think there is.”

“The Federal Reserve was pretty specific in the guidelines,” said Evie.

“Jesus,” he said.

But here's what's funny: after the initial shock they were both pretty cool about it.
Disappointed as hell
, sure, but not, like,
devastated
. You never know what's going to set them off. They'll blow up and murder me over the tiniest thing—like, say, dropping out of school—but sometimes, for whatever reason, they're just cool. As for me, I don't know. It just would've been real nice to give them some money, you know?

Anne Chicarelli returned from Arizona, the Grand Canyon State, with ancient cultures, modern dining, and more than a Hundred Ways to Say Adventure
™
(YAY!). She showed up the next morning, and this time she got out of her truck and came onto the porch, and without knocking or anything waited there for me to open the door. And when I opened it, there she was, standing right in the middle of everything, and it kind of spooked me. She looked different—
older
, if that was possible. Without a cowboy hat on, her hair was so short and thin.

“I see there was a fire,” she said.

“Yeah, it was pretty crazy. The firemen came and everything.”

“Well, thank you for watching my horses. Did they behave for you? I hope they did.”

“They were great. Wonderful.”

“Georgia hung on a lot longer than anyone expected, but then I told them,
She's a tough one. Always was
. I was in the lobby when she passed, but they say she went in peace with her arms crossed over her chest like a mummy. Now her body is six feet deep in the earth, with the sun shining down and the sprinklers watering the grass overhead. Of course, her spirit is in heaven.”

“Right.”

She looked at me. “And do you believe that?”

“Um.”

“And where does
your
spirit dwell, Adam? Have you opened your heart to Jesus? Have you let him fill you with his holy light?”

I thought back to my moment on the white horse—Cain or Abel, I wasn't sure. It wasn't Jesus in my heart, exactly, but it was something, I guess, but maybe beyond it, too. Beside it? Including it? It was too much to explain.

“Shall we pray?” she said.

“Yeah, OK.”

And when Anne started in on the preachy stuff I kind of just let the words flow around me like water over a stone. Her voice so low and gravelly. And it was OK, whatever she said, whether I agreed or not. There's more than one way to say the things that are beyond words.

It was decided that I'd watch Bones while Dad was on tour, and I drove over to pick her up on a Sunday morning. He handed me two pages of single-spaced typed instructions—seriously—along with her leash, brush, bed, food bowl, water bowl, and bag of Diet Munch
™
dog biscuits. I swore up and down I'd do a good job—and I meant it—though I didn't tell him about the little road trip I had planned for us.

We headed out that same day, cruising along on I-80 in my grandfather's Ford Ranger, just me and Bones. It was a beautiful day. I leaned the seat back to a comfortable position and watched the fence posts and sagebrush passing in a quiet blur along the interstate. Every now and again I'd catch a glimpse of the Humboldt River, winding like a glittery snake through the brush.

“Check out that scene, Bones.”

We stopped in Lovelock to use the potty, and I bought some beef jerky and potato chips, and fed most of it to Bones. She was into that. Then onward westward, past Fernley, to where the road starts winding along the Truckee River. Finally, under a haze of gray, I could see Reno. All those glittery buildings.

The traffic was pretty bad, and I got squeezed out of the exit I wanted to take and was funneled instead into a construction zone and then had to backtrack, but the extra time was fine because it gave me to time to figure out what dorm Shiloh was living in at the University of Nevada, Reno. I ended up parking on the wrong side of the campus—but again it was fine because it gave me time to think about what I was going to say to her.

But in the end I decided not to say anything.

When I got to her room, she wasn't there. Her roommate said she was maybe at the library. So I went over there, but she wasn't there, either. The library was cool, though. It had these big glass windows, and as I was looking out them, I saw her. She was walking along the grass with some friends. They were smiling and talking. I started to head out to see her, but about halfway there I caught myself and went back to the windows and just watched her walk along the grass with her friends.

And you could say I was a coward for not going out there, but OTOH, she seemed OK without me in the way. She had on her tie-dye shirt and she was laughing and talking and…she looked happy. So I said what I had to say right there, watching her through the windows.

“Shiloh, you were right. I was an asshole. I'm sorry. I'm working on it. Thanks for the fun we had. I hope you have a good semester and a fun time with your friends and a great life.”

And that was that.

Later, outside Reno where the highway begins its ascent into the Sierras, I called Katie—and was kind of surprised when she answered.

“Hi, Aaron.”

“Oh, hi! You picked up.”

“Sorry I haven't returned messages. Look, next time I'm in town I'll pick up my stuff, OK?”

“Actually, I thought maybe I could bring some of it to you.”

“That's OK. You don't have to do that.”

“I'm actually kind of already on the way.”

“What?”

“Like an hour away at most. Where are you? How do I find you?”

Katie was silent, and for a moment I thought I'd lost her.

“Katie?”

I heard her sigh. “Do you know where Sugar Pine Point State Park is?”

“No, but I can find it.”

“OK. From the parking lot, head downhill toward the water. There's an old mansion, some trees, and a pier. I'm at the end of the pier, reading a book.”

“Give me an hour,” I said, or tried to say, but now Homie
™
was in my face.

After that I couldn't pull up any maps, so I asked the lady at the gas station in Truckee if she knew how to get to Sugar Pine Point State Park. I'm not sure if she was confused or just messing with me, but anyway, following her instructions to the letter, I ended up at a small restaurant near the Lake Tahoe shore called The Pines. Still no service. The door to the restaurant was locked. Inside, a man with a shaved head was running a buffer over the floor. I banged on the door until he shut it off and looked at me.

“Closed until four!” he shouted.

“OK, but do you know where Sugar Pine Point State Park is?”